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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26550511">fears that I may cease to be</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripySock/pseuds/StripySock'>StripySock</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Long Walk - Richard Bachman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Behavior, Hand Jobs, M/M, canon typical language</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 08:13:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,215</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26550511</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripySock/pseuds/StripySock</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Olson breaks the line. McVries and Garraty run.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ray Garraty/Peter McVries</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>King of Exchanges 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>fears that I may cease to be</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninety6tears/gifts">ninety6tears</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from Keats - <i>when I have fears that I may cease to be</i></p><p>With many thanks to A. any and all errors are my own.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Tell me about your father's theatre," Garraty said, somewhere a little earlier on, back when words hadn’t always had a double meaning. He wasn't looking at McVries at the time, kept his eyes straight on the road, unseeing. He was alert though, fingers tense at his side, rolled his neck a little as he inclined an ear just a little bit towards McVries like he didn't want to miss a word. The cinema belonged to a different world, where McVries was Peter, not McVries, not walker number 61, or maybe corpse number 89, nearest the top in a mass grave, life clock stopped by a cosmic hand wielding a gas-tipped bullet. </p><p>McVries didn't remember it, his mind was an old spool on a broken projector: just glimpses of a black and white highlights reel. Like how there was just enough room with three people squeezed into the front seat to watch the movie star move across the screen from the waist down, if you couldn't get a better view. He doesn't remember much else, but he sure as fuck remembers Ginger Rogers moving backwards in three inch heels and all the leg you could handle.</p><p>"Garraty," McVries said instead, with no serious intent. "You wouldn't dance with me. Let me take you to the movies instead baby, I'm a good time girl but I'll keep my hands to myself. Popcorn hot and fresh, Coke from a fountain, Robert de Niro on top form. All the world's a stage even if we aren't being paid to act."</p><p>Garraty looked back at him, clear and serious. Looked like he wanted to laugh if he could figure out how. Something unusual about him from the beginning, some ability to pick up what McVries put down. He'd known even if that first moment, the touch of the carbine like some good luck charm, that Garraty would walk until he dropped, and that that fact was not even the third or fourth most interesting thing about him. Some unwavering instinct in McVries said, clearly, that if they were to voluntarily walk into the jaws of hell, Garraty would make good company.</p><p>And later, when they made a break for it, amidst Olson's screaming and the semi-automatic machine gun that Olson's body still knew how to use, even if his mind had parted brass rags with it, it was Garraty, fingers twisted in McVries's arm who made the first dash, even if they both went up the slope together, the desperate clawing of their hands disturbing the soil. Christ, the blood, on the ground, that they left behind them, it was a parting of the Red Sea, Macbeth couldn't wade through that, he'd be doing the goddamn breast stroke. In the forest, it's like a sudden silence has fallen around them, so utterly complete, so impossible that McVries wanted to scream as they ran, the only shuffling figures.</p><p>It smelt green, wet and grassy. Not the sort of green that came from back sheds and sullen kids with their heads playing the soundtrack of the sixties, their parent’s tunes, free love about as far from Tulsa as it was possible to get. The kind of fresh green of a forest, a green that could crawl down your lungs and choke you faster than a bullet through the throat. Sticks cracked at the faintest pressure, the damp rich smell of earth rising up from underfoot. Somewhere above, there was a bird, singing its guts out like an atheist call to prayer - <em> come fuck me before we all die, </em>McVries thought numbly. </p><p>Garraty was there, like a skeleton, dappled green across his face, sudden ray of sunshine through the canopy touching his hair with gold, and Christ on a saltine cracker, McVries was so fucking struck by it, that he stood there, long enough for a warning if they were on the road, precious time wasted even if they weren’t. <em> Queer, </em> he thought, distantly. Hell of a thought to die on. <em> Parker called it.  </em></p><p>It was a memory about as real now as a movie theatre where if you looked waist down you could see Al Pacino’s hips giving the come-on, wide sprawl against a bank countertop, no faces to make it real. Parker on the road, blisters soaking through the sides of his shoes, little red patches that he watched with a morbid fascination, like he had a bet about whether he’d take his ticket, before his feet poked through the wet little holes.</p><p>McVries matched him, step for step, a little rhythm, secret shared. Just a little upfront, Garraty was in time with Olson. The group of them reminded him of a centipede, but one missing a fair amount of legs now. He thought idly of a giant hand reaching down from the heavens and rolling the road, leaving them to kick their feet up towards the sky, before a soldier’s boot crushed them. Beside him, Parker was sweating, the slow sullen sweat of a boy unused to the sun tucking red hot fingers down the back of his neck. </p><p>“I can’t remember fucking,” Parker said, steady, like the pain in his feet reminded him, a little wistful. “I know it happened ya know. Can’t remember it.” </p><p>“In that case,” McVries said, “you have forgotten more than most of these boys ever knew. Grandfather wisdom without the progeny to worry about. You do yourself well, Parker.” </p><p>Beside him Parker smiled, a reluctant twitch of his mouth, like that was contradicting some helpful advice. <em> Hint 84, don’t smile, conserve strength. </em>“Be nice to remember it,” he said. </p><p>“You sure it did happen?” McVries said seriously. “Could’ve been a dream. Night Nurse doing you a good one.”</p><p>“Bastard,” Parker said and shifted his weight without breaking his stride. “Can’t all be lucky enough to get some on the road. You and Garraty, hand in fucking hand, skipping ya way to eternity.” It was said without malice, or at least as close to malice free as Parker got. </p><p>McVries accepted it as such. “Fuck you,” he said with equanimity. “This ain’t the yellow brick road and I’m about as queer as your Uncle Bob.”</p><p>“Uncle Bob was a bachelor.” Parker said and he wasn’t watching his shoes now, he was looking at the sky and laughing, like there was something enormously funny in the great expanse. “Hell, don’t take it wrong. Me, I can’t even remember the fucking. Can’t remember wanting to. Think I left that piece of me somewhere along the road.”</p><p>“Another souvenir for the crowd,” McVries said absently. “Someone’s gonna pick up that piece of you up Parker, gonna get home, open it up and all hell is going to break loose. Country boy right? Chicken won’t know what’s hit it.”</p><p>Parker was still laughing. “Hold ya boyfriend’s hand McVries,” he said. “Whisper him tender words. Sell the television men a story they won’t forget. Your face will live on in reruns long after your ticket’s punched.”</p><p>McVries’s face hurt from smiling, as he washed down another swig of water. “Jesus I wish I had your imagination,” he said. “I’d set up in some city and write a fucking bestseller.”</p><p>Without looking to the right, Parker sketched a dick in the air like a blessing. “Go in peace,” he declared. “May the road be smooth and Garraty grip just right.”</p><p>Wherever the fuck Parker is now, McVries would bet he’s pissing himself with laughter.</p><p>Somewhere in the distance, in the direction of the road, there were more gunshots. Garraty was walking still, feet sinking into the still loam of the forest, ragged puffs escaping him. There was poetry for cowshit, there was poetry for the road, McVries had nothing in his ample repertoire for the silence of the forest, and the pain, the pain is running through him now, up his back, and through his feet, an uncomprehending pain, and they can’t stop. Jesus they can’t stop, and there’s nothing driving them on, there’s no fucking prize at the end. </p><p>Ticket punched, journey ended, McVries thought, chewed on his tongue so it didn’t betray him, with the low call of anguish in his stomach. He could still feel Garraty’s fingers in his, warm and strong, and fuck it all, enough to pull him off the road.<em> You can teach a man to hurt </em> , his mind threw up, <em> but not enough to stop him making the same mistake </em>. </p><p>“Ray,” McVries said, didn’t know if it was inside his head or outside. “Garraty,” and lengthened his stride.</p><p>Garraty turned to face him. "There're stories," he said. "Every year there're stories. They make arrests, they Squad them, but every year the rumors are the same. There's people along the route to help, in case someone makes a break for it."</p><p>They neither of them need to say the obvious. The amount of ground that would have to be covered. The chance that this is one of the patches, that some hypothetical resistance, some nebulous entity, would scoop them up and tuck them in somewhere safe isn't just a pipe dream, it's the refuge of the insane. Not unlike the hypothetical Prize really though, and they'd walked for that. Whatever remained, after the impossible had been eliminated, would still have to be walked for.</p><p>McVries shrugged, felt the weight of the world lift just a bit. "Lucky for us," he said, "we know how to walk. Pretty damn good at it too. Masters of one foot in front of the other. Jesus, if they handed out awards, who could beat us for sheer entertainment value. Two billion in bets Garraty, think about that. They praise toddlers for this shit, but who the fuck ever bet that much on a toddler?"</p><p>Hitting the road was a shock. The two armed convoys that rattled past were a bigger one, they shrunk back into the undergrowth, hid behind the leafiness of the forest. Beside him, McVries could hear Garraty emptying out his lungs, a long almost soundless collapse of air, and standing still hurt, it <em> hurt, </em>so much that his vision was almost white with it. They'd stopped, restarting wasn't going to happen. They were going to sit here, they were going to sit here and wait to be shot, and he couldn't bring himself to care. When the truck came to a standstill, and the feet approached, he looked at them almost blindly, the sole debate whether it was better to be shot like a dog standing, or making a final limping run for it. </p><p>The man who stood there was a trucker. Brown baseball cap on grey hair, grizzled growth of beard, blue t-shirt with sweat stains. "You boys need a lift?" he said. Not much inflection, strong southern drawl, dragging out the words. "You hurry, we'll miss the cordon."</p><p>"Are you with t-" Garraty asked, was cut off with a swipe of the trucker’s hand.</p><p>"Not with no one," the trucker said. "Ain't no one to be with. You getting in?"</p><p>They got in, the rig empty, crowded into the back corner, like rats seeking the darkest place. The man, still without a name, slung a box in after them and as an afterthought, rolled a bottle of water and a grease paper wrapped packet towards them, before he shut and bolted doors. In the dark, punctuated only the smallest slivers of light through the pinprick holes of the walls, they huddled together, an animal comfort in the warmth of another body. McVries pressed his leg against Garraty’s, rewarded with the slightest pressure in return. Somewhere in the dark, the bottle rolled as the vehicle moved. Relaxation was an impossible dream, close as they were, McVries could feel the answering tension in Garraty, a coiled fear that matched his own, that rewarded every slow down with a sped up pulse, heart thumping wetly in his chest in time with the ragged pain in his feet.</p><p>"Hey," Garraty whispered, barely more than a breath of sound. McVries had to lean closer to hear, ear to mouth, felt the parched movement of Garraty's mouth, flash in his brain back to Scramm, the torn paperiness of his too-hot skin, the ruined timbre of his voice. "We're alive," Garraty said, leant his forehead for a long second against McVrie's cheek, touch of his face to the scar, pressure of it scalding. He smelt of the road. Other worse things as well, but it was the dust of the road that hung in his hair. He tilted his head down, and Garraty tilted his chin up, side of his mouth against McVries’s, brief touch and catch of their mouths, a slow drag, too dry to make it a kiss really, just enough for a shiver as a chaser to the pain. </p><p>When the truck driver ushered them out, it was with barely a look. He left them the tin first aid box and a folded twenty, drove off without waiting for thanks. Back in the woods, McVries found a brook and without looking at the ruined mess of his feet, he slowly peeled the socks and shoes off, before lowering them down to the water. He didn't know how he ended up with Garraty's sweaty hand in his, slip-slide of their flesh as driven by pain, they squeezed tighter, until it felt like his fingerprints had to be embedded in Garraty's flesh, somewhere sunk into the skin, a return brand etched into him as well. </p><p>Socks rinsed, the little tube of antiseptic cream fully used up on the raw abraded flesh of their feet, sandwiches devoured, they curled up like dogs in the raised, gnarled roots of a tree, next to each other. McVries was filled with a maddening, all consuming sense of futility as he looked up through the branches above at the stars, the desperation of his need to sleep at war with the uneasy fear that ran through his veins. Next to him, Garraty vibrated, long bone-deep shudders that sent his knee jerking spasmodically. Every so often, his hand landed on his leg, as though to still himself, iron measure of self control, the very thing McVries had first noticed about him.</p><p>“Jesus,” Garraty said beside him, voice thin, almost gone, like the silence had settled in his throat. “I can’t sleep. You thinking about the break as well?”</p><p>McVries hadn’t been. Not in the top bit of his mind. The blood, the ridiculous look of surprise on the closest soldier’s flat face before it disintegrated into living nightmare, the wet desperation of Olson’s hands, cradling a machine-gun closer than a lover. It’s living somewhere down below, every second of it sewn with meticulous button-fingers into memory. It’s all stitched up, like his face, someday it’ll be a scar as well.</p><p>“No,” he said into the air. Turned to face his right. Garraty was looking straight back at him, torn open, all the little bits of what made him tick on parade. </p><p>“Whatever you want,” Garraty said, the cadence of something remembered. </p><p>“Fuck you,” McVries repled. “We’re square. Dead square. Not the dead part though. You still walking Ray? Time to stop.”</p><p>Garraty’s lips pulled back from his teeth as though he’d seized unexpectedly at the thought. “Like you’ve stopped. It hurt enough yet?” He’d reached out a hand, fingers an inch away from the scar of McVries’s face, elbow crooked and held like an old man who couldn't take too much more pain.</p><p>“Will it ever do?” McVries offered. Garraty blinked, unreadable again, kind of look he got on his face when he thought of his girl, the one that had attracted McVries from the first, this remote look that Garraty was looking <em> through </em>whatever was in front of him.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Garraty said, ducked his head a little as though to hide his eyes. “We haven’t got to the other side yet.”</p><p>McVries wasn’t surprised when he touched Garraty, through the worn cloth, to find him already hard. Sex-mad the lot of them, everyone in the goddamn country, walking a line so close between life and death, that it only seemed right that they took it where they could get it. Garraty was alive, as alive as McVries and solid under his hands, and unexpectedly the hunger took him, the same dark, deep hole in his gut, not unlike Olson, only this one you couldn’t see. He could just feel it, under his ribs, buried deep and ravenous.</p><p>Garraty was a decent handful, fumbling at his zip so McVries could get at him properly, and then, unexpectedly, he was turning into it, curling over, moving his feet with care, until he was inches away down the line of their bodies, pants pushed down just enough that McVries could get a grip, not enough for much movement. McVries touched more from instinct than any knowledge, like an extension of himself, gripped firm and tight, drew his fist upwards, not wet enough for an easy slide, licked his hand to make it easier before he tried again. Garraty was just watching him, eyes intent on his face, on his scar, not a glance at where McVries's hand was working in between them, and the unabashed regard should hit McVries in the soft place of his shame, the instinct to turn away and crack a joke should kick in, but it didn't, excised in the same bullet fire that had killed the selves that walked the road, and left them whatever they were now, whatever had crawled out of the husks of the dead men they'd once been.</p><p>Even with that, he didn't expect the hand on his hip, Garraty touching him back, and why the fuck didn't he? Garraty, the idealist with eternal regard for fairness and rightness, and he touched like he'd never done this before, leaned forward like this was some highschool dance after three glasses of punch to kiss at the same time. Ray Garraty, master of the unexpected, the improbable. Kissed like he'd lost his breath somewhere in the woods, sharp, rapid breathing, electric touch of his tongue swiping his own bottom lip, and just brushing McVries's as their mouths parted, tilt of his head as he kissed, with his eyes closed now. It didn't take much, McVries hand gathered around them both, Garraty's hand in his collar, tugging his shirt tight against the scraped flesh of his back, a finger wound into the fine hairs at the back of his neck, and McVries could feel the tingle even through the red mass of dissolving pain that was the rest of his body. Jerked them both through it, slippery now with precome, an easier slide.</p><p>Garraty was more or less silent when he came, wet and hot against McVries's fingers, inhaled against McVries's mouth and held it, shook when he came down from it, in exactly the same way he'd done when they'd first lain down, but this time, the shudders stopped. McVries was only a step behind, lost it all over his own hand and Garraty's dick, sudden spark and burst of it enough to drive everything from his mind in the moment, the remarkable joy of the simple, enough if only for a second, to override the pain. </p><p>Afterward Garraty didn't move away, and the space between them was warm.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Feedback appreciated.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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